WORCESTER, MA - Scientists at the University of Massachusetts Medical School have applied a powerful tool in a new way to characterize genetic variants associated with human disease. The work, published today in Cell, will allow scientists to more easily and efficiently describe genomic variations underlying complex, multi-gene diseases. "Up to this point, we've only been able to investigate one disease-causing mutation at a time," said principal investigator Marian Walhout, PhD, co-director of the Program in Systems Biology and professor of molecular medicine at UMMS. ...

The oncologists Manuel Hidalgo, Director of the Clinical Research Programme of the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), and Ignacio Garrido-Laguna, member of the Experimental Therapeutics Program at Huntsman Cancer Institute of the University of Utah (USA), have recently published a review of state-of-the-art clinical treatments for pancreatic cancer -- including the most current therapies and innovative research -- in the prestigious scientific journal Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology. In their study, which reviews around 200 scientific articles published ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- Using a technique that introduces tiny wrinkles into sheets of graphene, researchers from Brown University have developed new textured surfaces for culturing cells in the lab that better mimic the complex surroundings in which cells grow in the body. "We know that cells are shaped by their surroundings," said Ian Y. Wong, assistant professor of engineering and one of the study's authors. "We've shown that you can make textured environments for cell culture fairly easily using graphene." Traditionally, cell culture in the lab has ...

An enzyme secreted by the body's fat tissue controls energy levels in the brain, according to new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The findings, in mice, underscore a role for the body's fat tissue in controlling the brain's response to food scarcity, and suggest there is an optimal amount of body fat for maximizing health and longevity. The study appears April 23 in the journal Cell Metabolism. "We showed that fat tissue controls brain function in a really interesting way," said senior author Shin-ichiro Imai, MD, PhD, professor of ...

Dolphins that raise their voices to be heard in noisy environments expend extra energy in doing so, according to new research that for the first time measures the biological costs to marine mammals of trying to communicate over the sounds of ship traffic or other sources. While dolphins expend only slightly more energy on louder whistles or other vocalizations, the metabolic cost may add up over time when the animals must compensate for chronic background noise, according to the research by scientists at NOAA Fisheries' Northwest Fisheries Science Center and the University ...

TORONTO, ON. (23 April, 2015) - A new study led by University of Toronto researcher Dr. David Lam has discovered the trigger behind the most severe forms of cancer pain. Released in top journal Pain this month, the study points to TMPRSS2 as the culprit: a gene that is also responsible for some of the most aggressive forms of androgen-fuelled cancers. Head of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at the Faculty of Dentistry, Lam's research initially focused on cancers of the head and neck, which affect more than 550,000 people worldwide each year. Studies have shown that these ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- A 47-year-old African-American woman has heavy menstrual bleeding and iron-deficiency anemia. She reports the frequent need to urinate during the night and throughout the day. A colonoscopy is negative and an ultrasonography shows a modestly enlarged uterus with three uterine fibroids, noncancerous growths of the uterus. She is not planning to become pregnant. What are her options? Elizabeth (Ebbie) Stewart, M.D., chair of Reproductive Endocrinology at Mayo Clinic, says the woman has several options, but determining her best option is guided by her ...

ANN ARBOR--Use of clean fuels and updated pollution control measures in the school buses 25 million children ride every day could result in 14 million fewer absences from school a year, based on a study by the University of Michigan and the University of Washington. In research believed to be the first to measure the individual impact on children of the federal mandate to reduce diesel emissions, researchers found improved health and less absenteeism, especially among asthmatic children. A change to ultra low sulfur diesel fuel reduced a marker for inflammation in ...

Boosting teenagers' ability to cope with online risks, rather than trying to stop them from using the Internet, may be a more practical and effective strategy for keeping them safe, according to a team of researchers. In a study, more resilient teens were less likely to suffer negative effects even if they were frequently online, said Haiyan Jia, post-doctoral scholar in information sciences and technology. "Internet exposure does not necessarily lead to negative effects, which means it's okay to go online, but the key seems to be learning how to cope with the stress ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass--Drizzling honey on toast can produce mesmerizing, meandering patterns, as the syrupy fluid ripples and coils in a sticky, golden thread. Dribbling paint on canvas can produce similarly serpentine loops and waves. The patterns created by such viscous fluids can be reproduced experimentally in a setup known as a "fluid mechanical sewing machine," in which an overhead nozzle deposits a thick fluid onto a moving conveyor belt. Researchers have carried out such experiments in an effort to identify the physical factors that influence the patterns that form. ...

April 23, 2015 - Interventional treatments--especially surgery--provide good functional outcomes and a high cure rate for patients with lower-grade arteriovenous malformations (AVMs) of the brain, reports the May issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer. The findings contrast with a recent trial reporting better outcomes without surgery or other interventions for AVMs. "On the basis of these data, in appropriately selected patients, we recommend treatment for low-grade brain AVMs," concludes ...

A new study by the University of Chicago Booth School of Business Assistant Professor Amanda Sharkey and University of Utah Assistant Professor Patricia Bromley found that environmental ratings have spillover effects on other companies' behavior. Rated firms reduce their toxic emissions even more when their peers are also rated. In addition, rated peers can even motivate some unrated companies to reduce their emissions. The research is unusual in that the role of peers in conditioning how firms respond to ratings systems has received little examination. The study, "Can ...

SINCE its first use in the 1980s - a breakthrough dramatised in recent ITV series Code of a Killer - DNA profiling has been a vital tool for forensic investigators. Now researchers at the University of Huddersfield have solved one of its few limitations by successfully testing a technique for distinguishing between the DNA - or genetic fingerprint - of identical twins. The probability of a DNA match between two unrelated individuals is about one in a billion. For two full siblings, the probability drops to one-in-10,000. But identical twins present exactly the same ...

This news release is available in German. An individual's behaviour in risky situations is a distinct personality trait both in humans and animals that can have an immediate impact on longevity. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen have now found differences in personality types for the first time in a population of free living field crickets. Risk-prone individuals showed a higher mortality as they stayed more often outside their burrow where they can be easily detected by predators, compared to risk averse individuals. Moreover, ...

Navigating through a cluttered environment at high speed is among the greatest challenges in biology - and it's one virtually all birds achieve with ease. It's a feat David Williams hopes to understand. A former post-doctoral fellow in the lab of Andrew Biewener, the Charles P. Lyman Professor of Biology, and a current post-doc at the University of Washington, Williams is the lead author of a study that shows birds use two highly stereotyped postures to avoid obstacles in flight. The study could open the door to new ways to program drones and other unmanned aerial ...

This news release is available in German. Researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have unveiled an important step in the conversion of light into storable energy: Together with scientists of the Fritz Haber Institute in Berlin and the Aalto University in Helsinki/Finland, they studied the formation of so-called polarons in zinc oxide. The pseudoparticles travel through the photoactive material until they are converted into electrical or chemical energy at an interface. Their findings that are of relevance to photovoltaics among others are now published ...

A Spanish-led team of European researchers at the University of Cambridge has created an electronic device so accurate that it can detect the charge of a single electron in less than one microsecond. It has been dubbed the 'gate sensor' and could be applied in quantum computers of the future to read information stored in the charge or spin of a single electron. In the same Cambridge laboratory in the United Kingdom where the British physicist J.J. Thomson discovered the electron in 1897, European scientists have just developed a new ultra-sensitive electrical-charge sensor ...

How long is the way from the city hall to the train station? When we estimate distances, something curious happens: short distances seem longer, and long distances shorter than they really are. Similar biases occur during judgments of volume, brightness or time. Psychologists call this phenomenon Vierordt's law. Its independence of the involved sensory systems suggests that our brain possesses universal principles for the assessment of physical quantities. However, where do the characteristic estimation biases stem from? In collaboration with colleagues from Zurich, neuroscientists ...

It's a common dilemma faced by many working parents: your child has a cough or a cold, do you send them to nursery? Researchers from the University of Bristol have, for the first time, investigated the process of decision-making that parents go through when faced with this situation. The research, published in The Journal of Public Health, reports that parents viewed coughs and colds as less serious and not as contagious as sickness and diarrhoea symptoms. This resulted in many parents sending their child to daycare with a respiratory tract infection (RTI), which can ...

In response to an article published by Chinese scientists describing research that used gene editing technologies in human embryos, the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) has again called for a moratorium on attempts at human clinical germline genome editing while extensive scientific analysis of the potential risks is conducted, along with broad public discussion of the societal and ethical implications. The research article, entitled "CRISPR/Cas9-mediated Gene Editing in Human Tripronuclear Zygotes," was published online on April 18 in the scientific ...

Imagine a day when scientists are able to alter the DNA of organisms in the lab in the search for answers to a host of questions. Or imagine a day when doctors treat genetic disorders by administering drugs designed to alter a patient's genome. It may sound like science fiction, but with the development of genome-editing proteins like Cas9 and CRISPR, it could one day become science fact. Before that happens, however, scientists must overcome a number of challenges, including how to improve the specificity of these proteins- the rate at which genome-editing proteins ...

A more intellectually demanding job may be the key to living longer after developing young-onset dementia, according to health researchers. Degeneration of the frontal and temporal parts of the brain leads to a common form of dementia affecting people under the age of 65. It results in changes in personality and behavior and problems with language, but does not affect memory. "[Our] study suggests that having a higher occupational level protects the brain from some of the effects of this disease, allowing people to live longer after developing the disease," said Lauren ...

An international team of scientists is calling for urgent and temperature patterns in mountain regions after compiling evidence that high elevations could be warming faster than previously thought. Without substantially better information, people risk underestimating the severity of a number of already looming environmental challenges, including water shortages and the possible extinction of some alpine flora and fauna, according to the research team, which includes Henry Diaz and Imtiaz Rangwala from CIRES, the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences ...

Shetland ponies' immune response to insect bites is helping scientists understand how people could be prevented from developing allergies. The horse immune system can respond to midge bites in a way that prevents - rather than triggers - allergic reactions, researchers say. The ponies' immune response to midge bites is similar to what happens in people with allergies, the team says. Understanding what triggers allergic reactions could help researchers come up with ways to stop people developing sensitivities. It was previously thought that ponies which do not suffer ...

April 23, 2015, Vienna, Austria: A drug approved to treat type 2 diabetes could prove to be a powerful new treatment option for non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), according to research presented today at The International Liver CongressTM 2015. Results from a randomised controlled trial showed liraglutide met the primary endpoint of histological clearance of NASH, and a reduction in the progression of fibrosis. The research was supported by the Wellcome Trust and the NIHR. In the Liraglutide Efficacy and Action in NASH (LEAN) trial, overweight patients with biopsy-confirmed ...